New Group Favorite Functionality in Infor CRM 8.3.06

One of the new features introduced in 8.3.06 is the concept of favorite groups. Previously a user saw all groups that were released to them when they went to a page in the web client. This caused performance problems to load all of these groups when the page was rendered- especially once you got above 100 groups for a page.

Infor’s solution to this is to allow defining a maximum number of groups to allow on any one page. The default number is 30. Only the groups marked as a user’s “favorite” are shown. The user can have up to the max number of groups marked as a favorite. There are a few issues with this approach (which I wont get into here) but it has lergely prevented one of the big performance issues in the web client.

When you install the Core 8.3.06 components, you get a new version of the ConversionUtility.exe placed in the Saleslogix install folder. This is version 8.3.0.2655. A previous version of this same named conversion utility exists prior to 8.3.06. You need to have run the previous version first before you upgrade to 8.3.06 and then run this new version at that time. One of the options in the new conversion utility is to “Create default favorite groups”.

What this step does is, for each user, it writes data to the USEROPTIONS table like this:

That is a lot to look at, but basically it adds two rows for each user. Both have a category = “MAINVIEW” and one has a name =”SETTINGS” and the other a name = “HIDDENGROUPS”. The “SETTINGS” row has the OptionValue set to an array of which groups are defined as the favorites at all areas of the client. Pretty ugly to look at and even uglier to try to manipulate via SQL. Seems like this area wasn’t fully thought out.

Regardless, without running this step when you log into the web client any area you go to has no groups showing other than the “Lookup Results” group. After running this you will have the default groups showing.

Users and the administrator can define these favorite groups. See the web client’s online help regarding this.
https://docs.infor.com/crm/8.3/webclient/en-us/content/manage/using_the_group_manager_view.htm